


riches and wonders

by starspecters



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Thieves, M/M, kravitz is a prince and taako is a thief, wow this sure is some self-indulgent BS i wrote in one sitting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-03
Updated: 2017-04-03
Packaged: 2018-10-14 08:49:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10533018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starspecters/pseuds/starspecters
Summary: There’s a gold necklace tucked into his pocket that he thinks Kravitz hasn’t noticed, but he knows Taako will put it back as soon as he acknowledges it. In his eyes, it’s part of their unspoken social contract. In Taako’s eyes, it’s part of their game.-Kravitz is a prince. He'll take whatever company he can get.





	

When Kravitz wanders back to his chambers, he’s not really expecting anything at all.

To be fair, the room is mostly unchanged -- bed, check. Rug, check. Weird bird skull his mother got him as a gift for his last birthday, check. But the overall environment of normalcy seems to fade dim behind the intruding figure he finds alight on his blankets, a lighthouse that Kravitz is drawn to like a compliant boat.

“Fuck,” the interloper says. A flicker of flame sparks on his fingers like flint, and the room is suddenly illuminated. “Fuck,” he says again. Kravitz thinks, stunned, that he’s surprised that tiny fire is able to produce that much light -- to have shadows scatter from the edges of bedposts and chair legs as if chased.

Belatedly, his fingers find his sword. He’s usually more observant than this, more strung -- like a bow already drawn, arrow in its notch --, but still his curiosity is a ball and chain on his memorized training. 

“Who the hell are you?” Kravitz says. His voice still betrays a fraction of interest, a weak notch in his projected outrage, but the guy doesn’t seem to notice. 

“You don’t _recognize_ me?” His voice is appalled, previous panic apparently forgotten. Kravitz is flummoxed. “It’s _me._ You know, _Taako?_ I’m kind of, I don’t know, _famous?_ ” Taako holds his arms out like he’s waiting for acknowledgment or readying a curtsy before seeming to remember where he is. He drops his hands to his sides, suddenly looking nervous. “Whatever. Don’t worry your handsome little head over it, my guy; I’m outie anyways.” 

Kravitz is impervious to the guilty backpedalling, too familiar with it coming from himself. “No, I don’t think so. I recognize that name.” And he does, now that he’s heard it. He just wasn’t expecting to find one of the kingdom’s most wanted perched on his bed, feather-light. Kravitz tilts his head. “You’re kind of a shitty thief.”

Taako splays out his hands, a mockery of honesty, bowing his head in mournful recognition. His hair is almost long enough to brush the floorboards. “What can I say? You caught me. Tell you what -- I have a _great_ deal for you. I’m gonna just, uh, _go_ , and you probably most definitely won’t find me lounging in _casa de Kravitz_ again, capiche?”

“Tell _you_ what,” Kravitz says, and his lips part like curtains, milky canines leaking through the gap. “How good are you at cards?”

 Taako looks a little disbelieving, a little intrigued, and Kravitz’s stomach flutters with something unrecognizable.

 

\-- 

 

“What I don’t get is,” Taako says, a carrot balanced at the corner of his mouth. There’s a gold necklace tucked into his pocket that he thinks Kravitz hasn’t noticed, but he knows Taako will put it back as soon as he acknowledges it. In his eyes, it’s part of their unspoken social contract. In Taako’s eyes, it’s part of their game. Taako continues, “you’re a prince, right?”

“Yeah. It comes with the big castle you’re so fond of breaking into.” Taako snorts. Kravitz prods him impatiently with a knee. “Hit or stand?” he repeats. The space between their crossed legs is a little too friendly, but they’ve wedged the cards between them onto the sheet below.

Plucking a card from his own hand, considering it at length just to piss off Kravitz, Taako drawls, “Stand.”

Frowning, Kravitz draws from the deck. Glances at each individual face; he adds and re-adds simple addition just to stall his begrudging admittance to loss.

Eventually, he sulkily pushes the makeshift chips towards Taako. Grinning something feral, Taako twists his cards to show off an unimpressive jack and six of hearts.

“I just -- I hate you so much,” Kravitz says mournfully.

“I know,” Taako says gleefully.

“Why do you always stand?” It was originally intended to be a prod, a teasing quip about a lack of variety in playstyle, but Kravitz finds genuineness collecting uncomfortably in the corners of his mouth as he asks, too sharp and awkward floating past his teeth. 

Taako leans back now, elbows propping him into a position he must have thought was going to be more comfortable than it actually is. Looking far from relaxed, his stomach pulls taut, shifting, lean under where cotton fabric has slid up and spilled above his bellybutton. 

“No point in taking unnecessary risks, my man. Too many uncertainties in that stack o’ hellish fate. The future is crystal when it’s already in my hands.” He shifts to jab himself in the chest with a few fingers. “Taako is good out here.” 

Humming, Kravitz shuffles their cards beneath the deck. “That’s kind of prudish.” 

“That’s kind of _smart._ ” Taako pushes back up, seeming utterly intent and sharper, somehow, softness taken out of the curve of his cheek and jut of his chin. Under the severe scrutiny of Taako’s gaze, Kravitz feels as though he’s being forced to meet Taako’s eyes again and again and again, caught in a loop of rapt attention. “We can’t all live in ivory towers with hundreds willing to die at our feet, _compadre_ . Risks get us _killed_.” His chest rises and falls roughly, jerkily, before the intensity abruptly fades -- there and gone, fast enough that Kravitz might believe it was never there. Judging by the suddenly sheepish expression on his face, genuineness seemed to have blindsided him, too.

 Kravitz stamps down on the need to bristle, and instead clears his throat uncomfortably.

“Anyway, none of that matter because I was _trying_ to ask you something earlier.” Kravitz deals out their hands, grateful to have his focus elsewhere. They don’t often acknowledge their difference in social class. It’s… uncomfortable. 

“You’re a prince.” Kravitz supposes Taako just feels like being difficult today. “So what exactly do you get out of this?” 

Kravitz does not make eye contact, burying his face in his queen of clubs and ace of spades. “Ivory towers get lonely, I guess.” An admittance, with a softening addendum. 

When Kravitz looks up, Taako is considering.

“Hit me,” he says.

 

\--

 

Kravitz thought Taako and him had this nonverbal list of accepted boundaries, but apparently Taako was under no such obligation.

“What are you _doing_ here?” Kravitz hisses, eyes darting at the sleeping guards nearby, but Taako’s footfalls were silent, leaving every piece of grass unbent as if he had levitated over them.

“You looked bored, my fella. I was just in the town nearby, and I remembered how _obviously_ you had hinted the other day that you wanted me to come see you. 

“All I said was that I was going to be leaving on a hunting trip…?” Kravitz frowns, suddenly deciding it’d be best to take this conversation elsewhere. He grips Taako’s wrist loosely and tugs him further into the woods.

“Ooh, eager, I like that!” Kravitz shoots him a glare over his shoulder. “You could have just asked, y’know. I know I’m a gem and a delight to talk to.” 

“I am going to glue your mouth shut,” Kravitz vows.

“I mean, if that’s what you’re into.” Refusing to acknowledge Taako being… _Taako_ , Kravitz twists around, ensuring they’re far enough from his entourage of glorified bodyguards.

“What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?” Kravitz waves his hands at Taako as if trying to push common sense into him by raising and lowering his arms a bunch. Taako looks unimpressed.

“Relax, Krav, ‘cha boy Taako is a one hundo percent certifiable thief. I can handle myself.” He crosses his arms, finally seeming a little put out. Taako is naturally sharp; when he’s upset, he just gets _brittle_ . “You’re not _worried_ about me, are you?”

“ _Yes_ !” Kravitz huffs, arms shooting up in emphatic exasperation. He shoots a quick glance over Taako’s shoulder nervously, but the silence suggests no one was woken up by his outburst. Lowering his voice significantly, he hisses, “ _Yes_ , I am worried about you, idiot; you’re one of the most wanted thieves in the kingdom, and you can’t just prance about people who want you dead and expect everything to be just dandy!”

“I don’t know if you _noticed_ , bubbaleh, but that’s kind of my _job_. This isn’t a risk; it’s something I do every day.” Kravitz wonders if this will always be a problem with them, an issue of clashing and clashing until they’ve sanded each other into their most acceptable versions. They’re like teenagers, still, awkward around things like trust and communication when they’ve had no one else to teach it to them -- or, at least, he assumes. Taako has never mentioned it, but Kravitz can only believe the reason someone would come back to him again and again is if they had no one else to return to.

He knows what they say about strays and offering hands, but he’d be remiss to turn down the company.

“It doesn’t have to be that way,” Kravitz mutters. The woods are dark and enveloping and Kravitz knows them better than anyone, but now their silence permeates a shade too harsh. Without meaning to, he feels the power gap between himself and Taako like a cliff’s edge, like someone has given him a chessboard set of all queens. Still, he keeps tonguing over it. A lost tooth. A fresh bruise. “I could help you, Taako. Give you a new life.”

“What, so I can exist only to be your playmate? I have my own ambitions, too, my man.” Taako tugs an errant strand of hair, seasand gold. His irritation is apparent but rapidly fading; Taako is snooty, but he’s more ‘slapdash, shitty comments’ than ‘long-winded arguments’. His genuine anger has the stamina of a wind-up doll, and Kravitz watches as his shoulders sink, follows the line to his exposed collar and up the side of his neck.

“I’m sorry,” Kravitz says. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“E _ugh_ ,” Taako groans, looking away and waving a hand. “Don’t _apologize_ , then you’ll expect me to apologize. Whatever, my dude, let live and let go. I won’t sneak into your shitty camp again.”

And for some reason, that makes Kravitz panic. “You should,” he blurts. “Uh, sneak into the camp, that is, because -- um.” And yeah, no, he definitely isn’t coming up with any plausible excuses because that’s kind of the whole reason he just got _mad_ at him, and Taako is looking at him inquisitively. Oh well. Time to perform his role as an offering hand. “Because you’re a gem and a delight to talk to.”

Taako’s mouth curls up at the corners, very ‘cat who caught the mouse’ grin spreading against his lips, smugness clearly present as he lowers his eyelids coquettishly. “Hell _yeah_ I am,” he says, a slave to praise, and he slings an arm around Kravitz.

It’s then that Kravitz realizes he wants to kiss Taako.

But it’s still a cliff’s edge, still a balancing act of trust for Kravitz to move his queens like pawns across the board, one space at a time. To move is too sharp a tug in their give-and-take relationship. To move is too great a risk.

Instead, he listens to Taako rattle on about nothing and everything and takes a page from Taako’s book:

He stands.

 

\--

 

The problem with waiting and Taako is that Taako won’t do anything ever unless his life depends on it.

Of course, he’s basing this on the theory that Taako likes Kravitz like Kravitz likes Taako, which isn’t exactly a _given_ , but if Kravitz spends all his energy fretting over details he might never leave his bed.

So presuming that Taako likes Kravitz and presuming that Taako wants to kiss Kravitz, Taako sure does like to do a lot more talking than action. 

“So then, I bump into Mags -- the one I told you about, who lets me crash with him and his wife because I ‘seem like a really great guy’ honestly, what the fuck -- and he has, like, a _litter_ of puppies tucked into his arms. Like, a straight up dog bouquet.”

“Mhm,” Kravitz hums, ridiculously fond. He’s realized he’s kind of an easily flustered sap nowadays, which is probably totally killing his reputation. He can’t exactly strike fear into the hearts of enemy soldiers if he’s busy tucking quiet smiles into the palm of his hand, thinking about what colorful commentary Taako would add if he were there.

Unfortunately for Kravitz, there’s a saying about watched pots. They never boil, but the second you stop paying attention to think some gay shit, they bubble over. Or something like that.

Like something natural, like it’s just that simple, Taako leans over the table and kisses him. He catches the corner of Kravitz mouth and then centers himself more towards the bow, presses in with indulgence he undoubtedly deserves, before pulling away.

He settles back in his seat, feet propped up on the table before Kravitz has even caught up. “You weren’t paying attention,” Taako says simply.

Kravitz starts to say something -- stops. Starts. Stops. He does this several times before finally settling on, “I felt you take my gold earring.”

Taako’s grin is sharp in answer.

 

**Author's Note:**

> sorry if this is messy its like 3am and conceptualized and wrote this in one big burst lmao. i swear i've wanted to write something for the new episode since i listened but my traitorous hands only ever wanna write taakitz. [points @ lucretia] you're next, I promise. feedback is always adored and appreciated!
> 
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